"Well, it's not that I see anything wrong with the church; I just don't like the conventionality of it all. I mean, I feel like I can worship God just as effectively during a walk through the woods on Sunday afternoon as I can sitting in a pew in a building on Sunday mornings. I just think the way we do church is stale and antiquated."

Have you ever heard a sentiment like this? Perhaps you've felt something like it. It does not take long living within the life of your average church in America until you wonder how all of the glorious things spoken of in Ephesians can possibly be true. In other words, it's tempting to leave the church simply because life within is so messy. In his book The Kingdom and the Power, Peter J. Leithart describes this mindset:

Some Christians are rather like a man going through mid-life crisis who dreams of a perfect woman to replace his aging wife; the concept of a perfect “invisible” Church is used to rationalize abandonment of what is, to all appearances, a sagging, wrinkled, “visible” Church.

Nowhere, to be sure, do the New Testament writers flinch from a full acknowledgment of sin and turmoil within the Church. The apostles would have no doubt grimly nodded if told of some wit’s suggestion that the Church is like Noah’s ark: if it weren’t for the rain outside, you couldn’t stand the stench inside.

Leithart uses an important theological distinction in his critique: visible vs. invisible. The church can be spoken of as "invisible," that is, the church from God's perspective—those who are truly saved and have been elected by God from before the foundations of the earth. But the church can also be spoken of as "visible," that is, the church from our perspective—those who profess faith in Jesus for their salvation and their children.

A few points can be made about these two entities. First, only God knows the roll of the "invisible" church. The true state of the heart is known perfectly only by God. Second, the New Testament spills most of its ink focusing on the "visible" church. The real business of any individual Christian with respect to the Christian life has to with that collection of people down at the corner of Elm and Main, the worshipping body of Christ gathered week-in and week-out before their God and serving.

This means that for a professing Christian, the main "action" of the Christian life will take place here: a living, growing, interacting and loving local assembly of which I am an "on the books" member. I'm sure this point will grate many of our readers who are far more versed in the post-modern, freedom-before-all version of local church life. Insisting on actual membership in a local church seems so irrelevant, bordering on quaint.

But there are two important points to make: first, does the Bible really insist on actual membership in a local church? It is true. There is no "chapter and verse" that insists upon local church membership in the New Testament. However, there are quite a few passages that command believers to "obey your leaders" (Heb. 13:17) and for local leaders to "shepherd their flock" (I Pet. 5:1–3). The question, then, is how can I be obedient to these passages unless I know WHO my leaders are, and WHO the "sheep" in my flock are? Local church membership, though dated and irrelevant to our ears, is a necessary part of Christian living.

Second, life in a local church is expected to be disillusioning. Even the most cursory glances through the spiritual states of the churches Paul planted throughout the Roman Empire will show that visible messiness ought to be assumed. The excuse that the local church is "full of hypocrites" or "too lifeless in their worship" is not only NOT an excuse to abandon her, it may very well be the very reason why God has put us within that body: to be a forgiving, loving, serving, and encouraging part of the solution, rather than an embittered, reactionary, ship-bailing part of the continuing problem. It is always worth asking if my involvement in my local body of believers has been a boon to our fellowship, or a bane.

The truth is that the playing field of the Christian life is the local church. If I can't learn to live and love there, then we have lost before we've started in our mission to advance God's Kingdom.



Les Newsom is the RUF Campus Minister at the University of Mississippi